Bye, bye Inhofe

The climate change denial circus created by Senator James “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe, outgoing chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has finally come to an end, but not, of course, without some final choice quotes.As reported earlier this week on DeSmog, Inhofe took one last stab at sowing doubt about the realities of global warming and chose again to make the US media the target.

For a while now, Inhofe has been incorrectly claiming that there is a long history of “one-sided” reporting on the issue of climate change, despite media studies (see attached) that show that in fact the climate change “skeptics” have enjoyed a large amount of press over the years. Inhofe continued this unsubstantiated claim at yesterday's hearing: “Much of the mainstream media has subverted its role as an objective source of information on climate change, into a role of an advocate.”

Coming to the defence of the media, Democrat committee member Senator Frank Lautenberg asked the “expert” witnesses whether they agree with Inhofe's oft quoted claim that “global warming is the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.” In response, David Deming, an “adjunct scholar” for the ExxonMobil sweetheart, the National Centre for Policy Analysis, offered his psychological opinion on the subject,: “We are dealing with a psychological phenonmenon which is a mass delusion.” It should be noted that Deming has no actual background in the area of psychology that DeSmog can find

Keeping the cirucs act alive, Deming and Bob Carter, another “expert” witness, made the outrageous claim that people should be emitting as much greenhouse gas as possible to avoid another ice age.

But the last word goes to Harvard Geophysicist Daniel Schrag who is very happy to see Inhofe finally giving up his gavel: “He [Inhofe] dredges up people that have no real standing in the scientific community and they spout off on their views. I think it's good for climate policy around the world that this was Senator Inhofe's last hearing.”

Comments

One of “them” claimed that there have been no deaths due to global warming. Not one person replied.
However, many people have died in recent years due to excessive heat, severe weather and flooding. Hurricane season extensions and more severe weather periods have, no doubt in my mind, added to the number of deaths in recent years due to weather.
I suppose for some, global warming science will never be completely settled. It is as far as I’m concerned. CO2 emissions are driving rapid global warming - as we speak. Our actions and inaction will lead to a collapse of our civilization, in my view. Even with that view, I believe drastic measures are needed to reduce emissions. If we reduce emissions we might delay the worst of the warming consequences until we might reduce our world population. We might be able to reduce the worst for today’s young people - if they are lucky enough to get old.

Breaking news… There are credible reports that Kevin Grandia is actually on the payroll of Jim Hoggan, the man who some have called an environmental wacko. Yes, Mr. Grandia’s role as so-called “operations manager” of desmogblog.com may in fact be financed by that same Jim Hoggan. Certainly you might question whether that matters. After all, how important could that role be, given that blogs like Daily Kos and Instapundit manage to handle thousands of times more traffic than desmogblog.com with no operations manager. Well, that’s not the end of the story. While Mr. Hoggan is likely way too smart to pay Kevin much at all for his so-called work as “operations manger”, we have sources that say that the real payoff may be delivered indirectly. Could kissing up to Mr. Hoggan’s extremism and outlier beliefs about global warming ultimately benefit Kevin’s career as a public relations flak? Developing…

What a star witness to call for your last stand. David Deming, the the fantastic professor universaly shunned by my alma mater, The University of Oklahoma, received 25 sexual harrassement claims for his newspaper tirade equating vaginas to guns. I can’t think of a better witness to convince the American public that global warming does not exist.

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